It says "King"

Your result for The Godzilla Personality Test!...

Godzilla: King of the Monsters!

Godzilla. The Original Badass. Congratulations, Mr. Mutated Dinosaur.

Bad News: You tend to have nuclear meltdowns on rare occasions (Godzilla vs. Destroyah) and you have a weakness to this thing called the Oxygen Destroyer. So you're not completely invincible.

Good News: You might as well be though. You've fought every monster out there and you usually come out on top. Sure you had your goofy moments in the 70's but really you are one bad son of a bitch, and everybody knows it. You have a lot of respect and people know when to get out of your way. Congrats, you're like the Fonzie of giant monsters! Oh and you tend to get mad whenever someone screws up the environment so hey good for you.

Take The Godzilla Personality Test! at HelloQuizzy

Book or Film?

Mood: Cranky and possibly ill

From PG Tremblay

Copy the list below.
Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
Italicize the ones that you’ve watched.
Tag 5 people to perpetuate the meme.

1. Jurassic Park

2. War of the Worlds

3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park

4. I, Robot

5. Contact

6. Congo

7. Cocoon

8. The Stepford Wives

9. The Time Machine

10. Starship Troopers It would been nice if the film of the same name had anything to do with the book

11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I've experienced this in all available media but play and towel. All were better than the film.

12. K-PAX well, when it was Man Facing Southwest

13. 2010 (but no 2001? huh?)

14. The Running Man

15. Sphere

16. The Mothman Prophecies

17. Dreamcatcher

18. Blade Runner

19. Dune

20. The Island of Dr. Moreau

21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

22. The Iron Giant

23. Battlefield Earth

24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman

25. Fire in the Sky

26. Altered States

27. Timeline

28. The Postman (see comment on # 10)

29. Freejack

30. Solaris

31. The Invisible Man

32. The Thing (Who Goes There?)

33. The Thirteenth Floor

34. Lifeforce

35. Deadly Friend

36. The Puppet Masters

37. 1984

38. A Scanner Darkly

39. Creator

40. Monkey Shines

41. Solo (Weapon)

42. The Handmaid’s Tale

43. Communion

44. Carnosaur

45. From Beyond You know the film's going to be wacky when the story it's based on is done before the intro credits.

46. Watchers

47. Nightflyers

48. Logan's Run

I am very surprised by the people who haven't read the Wells work. And the beginning is very weighted on Creighton, isn't it? Shouldn't there be more King?

I Like My New Hat

Mood: Enjoying A New Hat

I've never quite understood the appeal of being an editor. I've always thought I'd always write and never edit. I'd rather be on the creative side of things, coming up with the plot, hammering out the characters, all that sort of stuff.

Well, now that the Secret Project underway, I'm rather unexpectedly in the editor's seat. Over the weekend I received my first piece. It's wonderful. It's like a perfect jewel delivered to me, born of my idea, yet expressed in a way I never would have considered. Quite the giddy and unexpected thrill.

Sale!

William Jones has just let me know that my story "Dreams of Raw Flesh" will be included in his forthcoming anthology Tales out of Miskatonic University


Although I don't you know the full Table of Contents, I do know that Charles Gramlich and Lon Prater also have stories in the collection. Awesome.

I Like Your Market and Would Sumbit To It Again

Dark Recesses Press sends out really good rejection letters. I'm going to try extra hard for that market next time I've got something to send out.

And they've given permission for me to repost the letter, so here it is:

Good evening John,

Thank you for submitting your story, "Death on the American Family Farm" to us at DRP. We enjoyed reading it and even pushed it for further consideration; however we have decided to pass on it. Ultimately the ending was its downfall. Most of the readers felt it was rushed and a little flat.

That aside, the opening characterizations are magnificent and a lot of fun to read. You did a great job of filling the story in with small details that others may not have included. Instead of feeling wordy, it felt colored in.

I don't need to wish you luck in the future placing this story, I'm sure you will.

Keep writing,

Shanna Wynne

Dark Recesses Press
http://www.darkrecesses.com

The dark recesses of your mind are our playground... and we don't play fair.

This is a great rejection letter. Someone took some time to compose it, which means they really do care about me submitting at a later date. They liked the story enough to give it a second read (which I'm starting to think of as a 'bridesmaid' rejection). They told me what they think is a flaw, and again, I agree with them. Wish I could find these problems by myself, but I'm learning.

I'm very encouraged. Thanks Dark Recesses Press!

Why I live in Vermont

Mood: Hanging in there

Despite the mood I wanted to once again show you why I live where I do:


That said, Cthulhu's Dark Cults is available for pre-order on Amazon


Cthulhu's Dark Cults
Schemes of the Secret Masters
Edited by David Conyers

Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu® is an endless source of imagination of all things dark and mysterious. Here we journey across the globe to witness the numerous and diverse cults that worship Cthulhu and the Great Old One. Lead by powerful sorcerers and fanatical necromancers, their followers are mad and deranged slaves, and the ancient and alien gods whom they willingly devote themselves are truly terrifying. These cults control real power, for they are the real secret masters of our world.

"Introduction" by David Conyers
"The Eternal Chinaman" by John Sunseri
"Captains of Industry" by John Goodrich
"Perfect Skin" by David Witteveen
"Covenant of Darkness" by William Jones
"The Whisper of Ancient Secrets" by Penelope Love
"Old Ghost" by Peter A. Worthy
"The Nature of Faith" by Oscar Rios
"The Devil's Diamonds" by Cody Goodfellow
"Requiem for the Burning God" by Shane Jiraiya Cummings
"Sister of the Sands" by David Conyers

This book is one in an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu® fiction focuses on single entities, concepts or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft. This collection of ten stories features the cults which first appeared in classic Call of Cthulhu gaming supplements such as The Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Day of the Beast, Horror on the Orient Express, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth and others.

Published by Chaosium Inc. 2008

The end of another NECON

Today was the last day of NECON. I'm tired, because I never want to sleep at NECON. If I don't, however, I get massive headaches, and I'm absolutely useless.

It's a wonderful con, and it always is. Foremost in my mind is a conversation with several pros, which ranged from an unusual recipe for sausages to our proposed charity anthology "Naked Came the Hairy Stranger." I have never learned so much while laughing so hard.

The panels were useful as usual, and I exercised a lot of self-restraint by not buying a lot of books (I still haven't read all the ones from last year). I refreshed friendships, met many delightful new people, and generally steeped in the presence of many talented and creative individuals. There are many conventions, but there's only one NECON.

For the first time, I spread my books on the table and shilled. I'm not as bad at it as I was afraid that I was. And congratulations to Kim Paffenroth. He knows why, and I can't tell

Oh, and Nick Kaufmann? I see that you still blame me for the rubber ball incident of two years ago. This has not gone unnoticed.

Ceterum censeo Kaufmann esse delendam.

Punk on Roller Skates

Mood: Not Yet Awake

Let's see: Last week was a good week, but the one before that was not awfully great.

Some good things about last week: Some back and forth with an editor about a story. My ever-vigilant spam filter was catching him, so I didn't know he's actually responded to me in the middle of June. This problem has now been taken care of.

Also, I'm now an affiliate member of the Horror Writers' Association. It's my first professional organization. Yay!

But you don't come to my blog to read this stuff. You want to know what happened when Doc Paffenroth and I went to the opening of the Hudson Valley Horrors' derby season on May 31^st.

I had a good time. I haven't been to a lot of the usual American experiences. I can count the number of live converts I've been to on one hand, and I've never seen any sort of stadium show. And it's been a long time since I've been to a professional sports event. My impression of these things is that they are giant, well-oiled machines for the purpose to extracting money from the customer.


Roller Derby is a bit more punk rock than that. There aren't many perks (although if we'd known the more expensive tickets came with swag bags, we would have gotten them!) or spin-offs or big score boards. It's all spit and baling wire, duct tape and dirt. There's not much glossy about Roller Derby, and there are no TV cameras on it, and that non-slick feeling made it feel more grounded.

Yes, there are rules. The women circle the track, and when a jam is called, the smallest, fastest member of each team (the jammer) tries to lap the other team. She gets points for every opponent she laps. The number is not particularly clear to the novice at the end of the jam, but I expect that would change as the audience member watches more derbies.

To stop her from lapping, the other girls have a limited number of things that can do to stop her. They can't really go to town on their opponents; body-slamming and shoving them, for example, are illegal. Hip-checks are not. However, they can steal momentum by grabbing someone by the hips and pulling, and can shove a teammate into someone. Yes, this happened fairly frequently.

There's is a strategy. The really good jammers (Invader Zoom, Nuf Ced) didn't smash headlong into the other team, but wait for the right opportunity to get by them all, generally on an inside turn when they're all preoccupied with something else, like a five-girl pile-up after a lead skater went down.

All the girls have an assumed name. I don't believe this is because their "lives would be in danger" like los luchadores, but because it gives them a little extra theater. The creativity is a chuckle. Who wouldn't root for Slam I Am, the Killustrator, Lolita LeBruise, Alice Rumbledore, Invader Zoom, or my personal favorite, Minerva Steel?

The crowd was into it. I figure got between two and three hundred people there to watch an hour of derby, and the energy was good. I had enjoyed myself.

Kim did well. He's signed up as the Hudson Valley Horrors' official horror novelist. He's got Hudson Valley Horrors team members lining up to get eaten by zombies in his next novel.

Now I'm trying to think of a way to entice Kelly Laymon to the sport. It seems like a perfect match for her.

A NEW TOY

Mood: Entertained

Found on matociquala's blog, Wordle creates a word-cloud from whatever test you care to enter, emphasizing the most commonly-used words. It's fascinating, and you can adjust the colors and the font. I may start entering chapters of my novel to see what comes out of it.

This is a word-cloud for "The Patriot" the story appearing in Cthulhu Unbound. You can click on it and it will appear much larger.

Notes on the Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

From Nick Mamatas:

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. The Traveller-vintage Fusion Gun: Man Portable. Given the situation, there's no kill like an overkill.

2. "Mars: God of War" from Holst's Planet suite. It's reasonably long, so I won't get sick of it in ten minutes flat, while at the same time being unbelievable kickass.

3. Shane, from Shane. I don't think he missed one shot in that entire film.